The Art of Rejection

Posted on April 30, 2009 by

The Wall Street Journal just published an article about colleges and their rejection letters: “Rejection: Some Colleges Do It Better Than Others.” It’s a gives an interesting report on recent discussions on CollegeConfidential.com where college-bound students have shared details about the letters they received.

by Brymo, flickr

I was struck by one example. Admissions at Boston University tried (it would appear) to soften the blow by stating they “give special attention to applicants whose families have a tradition of study at Boston University.” But as one student responded, for someone who was attempting to follow his family tradition by attending the school such a comment wasn’t comforting at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

It’s always interesting when a message can be understood so differently from how the author(s) intended (yes, I know, I should stay away from the “intentionality” quagmire), and I do wonder if the letter writers were aware of how that line could be understood. But this example also reminded me of an opposite situation, one in which excessive celebration had others hang their heads down in shame. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I do remember hearing a thank-you speech that had enough superlatives for those who had helped in the project to make others who hadn’t worked on the project fidget uncomfortably in their seats. Ouch.

But if you have a minute, you should check out a thread on CollegeConfidential.com where users are spoofing rejection letters. They made me smile 🙂

going public

Posted on April 27, 2009 by

This morning I’ve been reading some of Mike Rose’s work, especially his arguments for teaching academics to write for public audiences (something he’s notoriously good at). Mike Rose is a Professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Information Studies and he’s well-known for his research on workplace literacy, remediation, and reconsidering our understandings of intelligence in relation to work.

In An Open Language: Selected Writing on Literacy, Learning, and Opportunity Rose points out that though rhetoric and composition as a field is “deeply connected to matters of broad public interest–literacy, teaching, undergraduate education” and we’ve been seeking connection with the public through service learning, courses in civic rhetoric, and work with workplace and community literacy projects, the field “offers little or no graduate-level training for public writing or speaking.”

Rose has been creating opportunities for graduates students in his program to learn more about and get more practice writing for public audiences (See his article with Karen McClafferty, “A Call for the Teaching of Writing in Graduate Education”).

Among the benefits of public writing, Rose says, are that “it can lead to a questioning and clarifying of assumptions,” it forces precision and “a honing of argument,” and forces you to think about what evidence is most persuasive.

I was struck by his comments, of course, because Harlot was started based on the recognition of a disconnect between academic considerations of rhetoric and persuasion and public deliberation of these matters. Rose’s summary of the benefits of public writing also moved me. Personally, I have struggled to write blog posts because of the kind of reflection writing for a public audience forces on me. I agree with Rose that such reflection will only make my writing better, and I aspire to become a better blogger–and a better public writer. Much like Rose noted above, though my dissertation research is directly concerned with public issues, I have not felt more removed from the public than I have writing my dissertation.

Check out Rose’s blog at http://www.mikerosebooks.blogspot.com/. The philosphy of his blog, in his words, is “a deep belief in the ability of the common person, a commitment to educational, occupational, and cultural opportunity to develop that ability, and an affirmation of public institutions and the public sphere as vehicles for nurturing and expressing that ability.”

Then & Now

Posted on April 23, 2009 by

The class I taught today reflected upon the statistics you’ll find below, compiled from a Mother Jones survey compiled in 2008. The conversation was fascinating, as they felt confident to speak from their personal experience. They readily use terms like “food movement” and “green movement,” but revealed some anxiety about the position they’re in: they feel a movement of sorts taking place, they say, but also feel individuated, isolated, and insignificant in the production of real change. Skeptical of the tired narrative that change begins with individual, no matter how true they know it to be, they seemed equally incredulous–but in a different way–about the possibilities of collective action. My use of the term “collective mobilization,” I suspect, came off as foreign, a bit old school (in the bad sense). There were, of course, tinctures of intimidation in such a term, too.

Anyway, I invite you to share these numbers with others and strike up a conversation about potential avenues for change . . .

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King Kugel and April Fool’s

Posted on April 17, 2009 by

This is a bit late, but I’m just now catching up on some blog lurking.

Rotten With Perfection displays what was the “beginning of April Fool’s:”

In 1983, Boston Univ history prof Joseph Boskin could be read and seen via a number of news outlets–the Today Show, newspapers across the country–pontificating on the little-known history of April fool’s day. The video here relays the story he told. The AP had contacted Boskin and called upon him to give them some info about the “holiday.” Boskin admitted he was no expert, but said yes (jokingly). The story of King Kugel was spun nationwide as the origin of April fool’s–that is, until Boskin used it in his classes as an example of the need to be a discerning audience. He made the whole thing up.

Of course, I say it also shows the persuasiveness of being a so-called expert on a subject. What they’re telling you might be complete bunk, but if they’re the authority on the matter, then it’s still tempting to listen to them.

An Inconvenient Tangent

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Kate

I’m teaching a course on documentary this term, and today my students were watching/analyzing An Inconvenient Truth. I picked this doc because we’re talking about the use of personal narratives in/and public rhetoric, and I’m kind of fascinated with the “Al Gore Show” woven throughout the film.

For the most part, of course, we see Gore’s slideshow presentation and listen along with his (rapt) audiences. (As one student suggested, the director lays the prophet robe on Gore a bit heavily.) But every so often, that lecture is interspersed with Gore’s reflections and anecdotes about how he came to be offering that slideshow. And at those junctures, his voice changes, becomes low and intimate, the footage becomes soft-focus or creatively aged, and the pathos becomes a bit heavy-handed.

… as a student’s sudden snort made abundantly clear. It was the snort of a burgeoning rhetorical critic, and it confirmed my hunch about some of the risky, even reckless rhetorical choices Gore and the director made in that movie. And the personal quest angle isn’t the only one. I wonder whether the warm fuzzy fatherly feelings would work on audiences alienated by his Bush jokes? Or are we to assume that no one who voted for Bush (that’s a lot of people) belongs in this doc’s audience?

More as my students figure this all out…

The End is Nigh . . .

Posted on January 19, 2009 by

Stanley Fish’s column in the New York Times yesterday focused on the astute scholarship of Dr. Frank Donoghue, Associate Professor at The Ohio State University, and his most recent book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.

The topic in the cross-hairs is the fate of the modern university and the axis that the conversation hinges on is one of economic and social utility versus a special sort of “inutility.” Fish wants us to see the university as most valuable when it doesn’t intervene “in the social and political crises of the moment” and argues here as well as in his book, Save the World on Your Own Time, that the university should not view itself as instrumental, that is, “valued for its contribution to something more important than itself.” I’m not so sure that Donoghue would get behind this; his critical project is more about clearly articulating the problem than it is about offering solutions. In fact, if you were to ask him, as I once did, he will probably offer you the same chuckle that I got. He said, “Solve it?! You can’t solve it. It would be like trying to ‘solve’ capitalism.”

What might be interesting for readers of this blog–those interested in rhetoric, composition, literacy, and other really cool schtuff–is that our discipline, I would argue, is often at the center of these issues. Whether it’s the idealized rhetoric of the liberal arts institution that universities still troll out in their television spots or the economics of the required first-year writing course and its attendant issues of tiered labor and corporate management theories, the stuff many of us do every day (and how we defend it) is inextricably bound to the issues that Donoghue explores. I urge you all to read this book and arm yourself (yes, I am quite conscious of the militarized rhetoric) with a strong historical knowledge of how we arrived at this point. The end may be nigh, but that means a beginning is near as well . . .

I killed Rudolph

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Kate

Yesterday as I was meeting with some students from my first-year writing and rhetoric class (which focused on analyzing narratives), they were joking about how their newfound rhetorical awareness had been messing with their minds. (And yes, I know that some of this was no doubt revealed with their yet-to-be-posted grades in mind.) One comment in particular gave me a warm holiday glow. To paraphrase:

“You ruined Rudolph for me. Here’s this guy who’s different from the rest, and marked physically by that difference — so he’s ostracized by the crowd, disrespected and disregarded… until, that is, he can help out some rich white authority figure. And then suddenly he’s embraced and accepted, just because he can contribute to their power. That’s some b.s.”

Rebel Rudolph (by shiny red type, Flickr)

Hell yeah, it is! Don’t get me wrong — I love Christmas specials. And Christmas songs. I’m a sucker for sparkly lights, eggnog-induced cheer, and the Island of Misfit Toys. But sorry, Santa — I’m an even bigger fan of critical college students.

Side note: Did you know “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was actually created as a marketing ploy by a department store? Yet, as Snopes.com points out, the original was rather less problematic in certain ways: Rudolph was not a resident of the North Pole, just an average reindeer with loving and supportive parents. He was well-adjusted and confident long before Santa stumbled upon him in a moment of need. Fascinating revision from there to the current version, right?!

Rudolph and his lady friend (by voteprime, Flickr)

Reading Harlot between the lines . . .

Posted on December 5, 2008 by

I just came across this quote from Margaret Marshall’s 2004 monograph, Response to Reform: Composition and the Professionalization of Teaching:

[W]hether we aim to publish our scholarship directly to a public audience or to use our scholarly expertise to participate in public situations, we are not always well prepared to do so and the reward structures of higher education do not encourage such activity. Composition, though, is particularly well suited for making such forays into public venues because its interests in literacy, language, and the cultural structures that support these activities have so many possible public connections. Composition has a great deal to gain by considering how such public work could be represented appropriately within institutional and professional terms and structures.

When academics fail to engage public audiences outside our disciplines, when we ignore the implications of our scholarly work, or when we keep our teaching safely out of sight, we help turn universities into mere bureaucracies that use intellectual labor as a commodity, ceding our professional aspirations as the price for speaking only to ourselves. But because this is the way things usually are in the current world of higher education, does not mean this is how things out to remain. For me and many others who know the history of the teachers who came before us, too many years have been spent gaining the standing to speak to not now choose when and how we will do so.

Rhetoric in the News . . .

Posted on November 24, 2008 by

Here’s what you might find on the BBC newspage if you’re cruising around tonight:

It doesn’t give much insight into the rhetorical skill of Obama, offering up only the obvious, like pairing his intonations with sermonic delivery (here referred to as “churchy”). What irked me a bit was a missed opportunity by Ekaterina Haskins, the selected academic expert on rhetoric, to correct the popular (pejorative) understanding of rhetoric. Haskins, who is cited as being a professor at Iowa, but from what I can tell is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic (but received her doctorate from Iowa), is quoted as follows:

Rhetoric always has the connotations of being about appearances rather than reality but he doesn’t sound false. He plays with the patriotic abstractions that allow for a certain kind of rhetorical manoeuvring and fills them with specific concrete examples.

While there’s a chance that the BBC snagged a quote out of context, I was disappointed to see the Appearance/Reality binary that rhetoric is so frequently and so unfairly thrown under reinforced and left mostly unchallenged. It is implicitly suggested that rhetoric is more than the connotations that typically accompany it, but her quote actually uses them to prove her point. I’m not sure that “he doesn’t sound false” debunks the Style/Substance divide that rhetorical studies have attempted to overcome for sometime now. I’ve read a few pieces of Haskins’s scholarship (she’s a classical rhetorician, focusing on Isocrates) and it’s very smart stuff, so I’m surprised by this missed opportunity.

One of the goals of Harlot is to engage the public with an understanding of rhetoric that transcends this limiting conception. While I don’t want to speak for the project, I teach rhetoric as epistemic. In other words, rhetoric simultaneously describes, discovers, and creates knowledge.

My thoughts two days later:

Am I just ornery? Perhaps I’m being crabby and should be appreciative of the fact it doesn’t outright slam rhetoric as being useless and deceitful? This is the view that the Rhetoric Society of America has taken. Here’s a recent email from them:

Harlot, as I see it, will continue to work to make rhetoric an integral part of every informed citizen’s life, going beyond an understanding of rhetoric as good or bad, to rhetoric as something indeliably necessary.

post-election reflection

Posted on November 24, 2008 by

Whether or not you’re happy with the results of the 2008 Presidential election, you might be troubled by this:

Rick Shenkman, associate professor of history at George Mason University, recently published Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter. Below is a YouTube video he created and shares on his blog, aptly named howstupidblog.com.

How much can we trust all the rhetoric about how stupid Americans are?

Most accusations of American anti-intellectualism, ignorance, and unreason come from academics. So, I’m wondering what nonacademics think.

Just how stupid (or not) are Americans?
How do we react to such accusations/arguments?
Does this year’s election support or refute Shenkman’s argument?

Harlot

A revealing look at the arts of persuasion

Category Archives: Education